You’re back from your holiday vacation and hopefully you unplugged while there. And now you have a vacation hangover. You’ve got way too many things to do for work, not enough time to do them in and your wondering, just like you’ve wondered the morning after you had one too many drinks, was it worth it? Should I really have even taken off for the holidays?

I remember a time when we returned home from a work/play trip, the hangover hit me (and my husband) hard.  The around the world re-routing and delays of flights to get us home didn’t help nor did the three hours of sleep we got the night we returned due to the around the world trip home. My husband walked in from his first day back at work, looked at me without a hey, hi, how are you, and simply stated, “I don’t think our vacation was worth it.”  After which, he took the time to look at me, still in my pajamas, covered in spit-up from our small children, no shower in 48 hours, laundry piles all over our closet and again simply said, “Looks like your day went about like mine too.” Whereas he had been at work, I was trying to catch up on work and laundry and spend time with our two kids on our first day back.  Not good. We actually both needed a drink, or so we thought, to nurse our vacation hangover.

If you took some of our unplugging tips to heart by getting stuff done before you left and scheduling a day or two to play catch-up when you returned (unlike us), you may not be hung over at all.

But if you are, here are some tips to get over it:

1. Realize you have to take recovery from your hangover one day at a time.  You can’t get everything done in one day, so don’t stress yourself out when you don’t.  Prioritize what is going to help you get over your hangover the quickest and tackle that first. Ignore your inbox if you have to. Those 987 emails can wait.  For me, tackling the grocery store and painting with my three-year-old was more important than the email inbox. It was a beast though when I got to it.
2. Sleep. If you don’t catch up on it, you are never going to get anything done. Sleep some of it off to be more productive.
3. Drink water. Lots of it. Especially if you’ve been on a plane. Even if you haven’t been on a plane, water can help cure any type and any size hangover.  Well maybe not a vacation hangover as much as drinking water, but it does beg the point of making sure you take care of yourself physically because if you don’t you’ll never get your productivity back.

How have you nursed a holiday vacation hangover and gotten through it?